Boy Woodburn Part 76

"Joses," he said deliberately, "you're a clever rogue."

The fat man's eye became almost genial. He looked warily round, and then came a step closer.

"Ain't I?" he whispered.

Silver, laughing gently, handed him his cloak.

"Here it is," he said. "I'm keeping the little bit of paper that was in the pocket."

The other's pupils contracted.

"What paper's that?"

"The prescription of the dope mixture you handed in to Burgess and Williams, the Brighton chemists, yesterday morning. They put their stamp on it and the date. I've just come back from a chat with them."

The fat man watched the other as a rabbit watches a weasel.

"Are you going to peach?" he said.

"I'll tell you after the National," replied the other.

Joses dropped his voice into his boots.

"Make it a monkey and I'll quit," he muttered. "She's worth it," he added cunningly.

Silver looked at him.

The tout came a sudden step closer.

"I _know_," he whispered.

BOOK VI

MOCa.s.sIN

CHAPTER XLV

Aintree

The Grand National is always the great event of the chasing year. This year it was something more. As the American Amba.s.sador in England, speaking at the Pilgrim's Club a week before the race, said, it was an international affair fraught with possibilities for two great peoples, one in blood and tongue and history, whom an unhappy accident had parted for a moment in the past.

The mare indeed was a magnet. At the time that England is loud with the voice of lambs, and the arabis in Suss.e.x gardens begins to attract the bees, she was drawing men to her from all the ends of the earth.

They came hurrying across the seas in their thousands to see the Hope of the Young Countries triumphant, and above all to compel fair play for their champion.

Indeed, there was an undeniable touch of defiance about the att.i.tude of most of them. Last year the old folks at home--G.o.d bless em!--John Bull, the leariest of frank-spoken rogues!--had done her in.

The mare had won and had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts; and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers could get away from them.

On the question of Chukkers and the Bully Boys, as the English cheap press called them, showed themselves eminently reasonable.

As they said themselves not without grimness, "Gee!--Don't we know Chukkers?--Didn't we riz him? His father was a Frisco c.h.i.n.k, and his mother a Mexican half-breed. You can tell us nothing about him we don't know. We admit it all. Wipe it out. If she'd been ridden by the straightest feller that ever sat in the pigskin the result'd have been the same. Are you going to give America best in your big race? Is John Bull a bleatin' baa-lamb?"

And so _Hands off and no Hanky-Panky_ was the war-chaunt of the young American bloods whom great Cunarders vomited on to the docks at Liverpool and P.-and-O.'s landed at Tilbury to join the Ikey's Own, who had been on watch throughout the winter.

The National always takes place on the Friday of Aintree week.

All the week special trains were running Liverpool-ward from the ends of the British Isles. London, Glasgow, Cardiff, and Plymouth each sent their contingents speeding north on the same engrossing errand. All day and night people were turning out in their thousands, hanging over bridges, lining railway embankments, to see the great engines with the Kangaroo bound to their buffer-plates coming through, yes, and cheering them.

The Boys in the corridor trains stood at the windows with folded arms, watched the waving crowds grimly, and winked at each other.

They had a profound admiration for John Bull's capacity for roguery, and an equally profound belief in their own ability to go one better.

Last year J.B. had bested them--and they thought all the better of him for it. This year they meant to get their own back--and a bit more.

_We are coming, Uncle Ikey, we are coming millions strong, For to see the haughty English don't do our Ikey wrong,_

they sang out of the windows with provocative enjoyment.

The people waving on the embankments were in fact innocent of crime, committed or conceived. They had no champion of their own, and with a certain large simplicity they hailed as theirs the mare who had crossed the seas to trample on them.

Liverpool made holiday for the occasion.

The Corporation feasted its American visitors, while the big ship-owners gave a dance at the Wellington Rooms.

The Adelphi Hotel was the headquarters of the Beyond-the-Seas folk, and it was full to overflowing. In the huge dining-room, where every year the Waterloo Cup dinner is held, there was an immense muster the night before the race. Lord Milburn, the Prime Minister, was there, with the Mayor of Liverpool on his left, and the American Amba.s.sador upon his right. One famous Ex-President of the Great Republic was present, and many of the most distinguished citizens of the two countries; Ikey Aaronsohnn with his eternal twinkle, was there, and Jaggers looking like a Church of England Bishop. Chukkers alone was absent. And he was lying low upstairs, it was said, with one of Ikey's Own at his bedside, and another over his door, to see that no harm befell him before the great day dawned. America might not like the great jockey, but she meant him to ride her mare to victory.

Lord Milburn, a somewhat ponderous gentleman, well-known with the Quorn, a representative Imperialist statesman, was at his best. And if his best was never very good, at least his references to Moca.s.sin brought down the house.

"She is something moa than the best steeplechaser that ever looked through a bridle-ah," he announced in his somewhat portentous way. "She is--in my judgment--the realization of a dream. In her have met once more the two great streams of the Anglo-Saxon race. You have every right to be proud of hah; and so, I venture to say, have we. For we of the old country claim our share in the mare. She comes, I say, in the last resort--the last resort--of English thoroughbred stock. (Cheers, Counter-cheers.) And if she wins to-morrah--as she will (cheers), 'Given fair play'" came a voice from the back. "_That_ she will get--(cheers and boos)--the people of this country will rejoice that another edifice has been laid to the mighty brick--ah of Anglo-Saxon fellowship on which the hope, and I think I may say, the happiness of the world depends."

The evening ended, as the Liverpool _Herald_ reported, at two in the morning, when Abe Gideon, the bark-blocks comedian, was hoisted on to the table and sang the _Moca.s.sin Song_ to a chorus that set the water in the docks rocking.

CHAPTER XLVI

The Sefton Arms